“In his second year working with Fratelli Boffi, Ferruccio Laviani has created yet another fanciful world from the depths of his prolific imagination. A concept that goes beyond individual products, it combines the expertise of a company that specializes in full-feature and tailor-made projects with the creativity of a designer who can strike a balance between the past and the future, blending the harmony and magniloquence of the classical with the charm and allure of the contemporary.

For the 2013 Furniture Exhibition, the renowned architect has created an entire universe divided into a home’s different spaces. Ferruccio Laviani enthusiastically focuses on the concrete design aspect of interior design, creating unique products that have a strong visual impact and a one-of-a-kind look, as well as coverings, panelling and flooring. This far-reaching vision blends and encompasses different sources of inspiration and questions the traditional tenets of design and furniture.

The fanciful blending of styles is paired with an innate sense of wittiness to produce furniture like the Good Vibrations storage unit. Selected for a preview of this new collection, the piece exemplifies this new design philosophy and the harmonious juxtaposition of the languages and cultures it is based upon.

Echoes of faraway places and Oriental elements are glimpsed in the ‘disorienting’ design of this storage unit, which seems to have been ‘deformed’ by a strong jolt or by swaying movements. Although it appears to depart from the aesthetics of the past, in fact it draws upon ancient knowledge in the use of carving and fine wood workmanship.

The appeal of this extraordinary piece of furniture lies in its ability to overturn and question classical stylistic principles such as purity, cleanness and symmetry, while evoking a comforting feeling of deja-vu and a sort of primitiveness, matched by unquestionable craftsmanship.”

UPDATE: manufacturer Fratelli Boffi is hinting it will show Good Vibrations at the 2014 edition of Milan Design Week.

101 thoughts on “Good Vibrations Storage Unit by Ferruccio Laviani”

Any chance on seeing a side angle or a 360 degree video? Or a making-of video on how it was done? Just one picture isn’t enough since anyone looking at it would just assume it was photoshopped instead of actually constructed.

photoshopped. there are patterns in the wood grain that distinctively repeat indicating that a clone tool was used to photoshop this image. why are there no other images? taken at different angles? probably because this was photoshopped.

Given the fact that this was created for an actual furniture exhibition (where it is supposed to be on display), all of the cynics should have a chance to find out whether it’s real or not soon enough. In the meantime, it’s okay to just enjoy the concept and not cry foul immediately. I know some people think that’s a requirement on the Internet, but it’s really not.

I don’t buy the “Photoshop!” claims. I looked carefully at this image, and every shadow and highlight that I can locate is correct. You can see the proper perspective depth of the cabinet in no less than 40 different areas, including the “glitch” sections. And repeating wood grain patterns are pretty typical of, oh, ANY piece of furniture built with processed lumber. I’ll agree that additional angles would be nice to see, but after a careful look, this image gives me no reason to doubt the piece’s authenticity.

Honestly, I am not sure why people doubt this can exist. Once you have the concept, it is just a matter of crafting it, yes? It is not subverting physics, just people’s expectations, and while certainly challenging it does not seem (to a layman like me) like an especially difficult construction. Even if this particular image is a render, it could very conceivably become real.

As a craftsman, the thing that gives this away to me isn’t grain repetition, I’m not seeing that, the image is too small to really see that. What gives it away is the fact that all of the grain is oriented horizontally. No craftsman with the skill to carve something of this complexity would make such an amateur mistake.

The other possibility is that this was carved out of a solid blank, using a cnc router.

Interesting: I do not see this as ““deformed” by a strong jolt or by swaying movements.” This is NOT a representation of force or reaction to force. Not at all!

This is INSTEAD an artifact of analogue video inscribed in a pre-industrial hand-made object. Furthermore, if this object were in the same room as the viewer, one can only assume that video as a representational and disruptive force has altered space and perception itself.

If you zoom in on the largest version of the image, it’s pretty convincingly *not* photoshopped.

Just above the base at the bottom, and under the plinth at the top, you can see there’s depth to the unit (or very skilled photoshopping).

The piece looks like it’s about 1/4 – 1/5 as deep as it is wide, and the decorations at the front don’t extend all tje way back, so a front-on picture is just the one that presents it in the best light.

WOW!!!! THIS ARTIST HAS AN EXCEPTIONAL TALENT. THE THINGS THAT IMPRESS ME THE MOST ARE THE AMAZING DETAIL IN HIS WORK, AND THE COMMITMENT TO MAKE HIS PIECES ONE OF A KIND MASTERPIECES.NOT ONLY WILL THEY BE EXSPENSIVE NOW IMAGINE HOW MUCH THEY WILL COST WHEN THEY ARE ANTIQUES,AND THEY ARE SO UNIQUE. BRILLIANT IS WHAT I CAN SAY ,BRILLIANT.

Also, check the light-blue specular highlights on the lower-left hand side of the original image:

Blue is the complimentary color to brown, so you’d normally set up a blue specular light somewhere in the rendered scene to bring out the highlights of a brown object. There’s virtually no shadows or visibly discernible curvature on the background either, which strongly suggests it was rendered in a “virtual” setup:

I suspect that if the cabinet does exist as this page says “the Good Vibrations storage unit was carved from oak by a CNC machine” and “Laviani’s piece will be displayed at the Salone del Mobile in Milan from 9 to 14 April next month”, this image was probably the original 3D render of the model that was used to program the CNC machine to do its work.

I’m not a woodworker, but I don’t see how there can be a nearly pixel-perfect repetition of a pattern on the same unbroken piece of wood.

Also, as I said before, the lighting looks very artificial, especially the highlights – it looks more like shiny plastic. If you go look at some renders on CGTalk you can probably find a few images with the same sort of look.

If this is real, I’d like to see a walkaround video. It just screams fake to me, though.

Okay, so let me get this straight.
50 years ago, my grandfather would beat the hell out of his T.V. to keep the picture straight and aligned, but NOW we create art that is warbley on purpose?? How the times have changed…

But seriously, this is the most enjoyable and perhaps equally disturbing piece of art that I’ve ever seen. I mean it about being enjoyable. I’ve seen impressive things in my short lifetime, but this is a concept that I have never considered. Well played master. Well played.